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4201 Connecticut Ave. NW
(202) 686-9999
Hours of Operation and Prices
Lunch: M-F 11:30-2:30; Entrees: $6-$8
Dinner: M-F 4:30-10:30, Sat-Sun noon-10:30; Entrees: $8-$13
Other Information
• All major credit cards
• Reservations recommended for 6 or more
• Dress: casual
• Street parking
• Nearest Metro: UDC-Van Ness
• Handicapped Accessible
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Thai cooks, using hot chilies and cold lettuce, have perfected the marriage of fire and ice in their appetizer salads of beef, seafood or chicken. The best introduction to Thai salad art is larb, finely chopped chicken tossed with onions, scallions, hot green chilies and cilantro and dressed with lemon or lime juice. It's served with leaves of iceberg lettuce, and the idea is to spoon some of the larb onto a lettuce leaf, wrap it up into something approximating the shape of an egg roll and eat it by hand. Chances are it will be a mess, but a most delectable mess. At Ladda, the chicken is warm, cooked fresh so that the chopped bits are juicy. The onion and scallion taste almost sweet against the lemon and chilies, and the lettuce mutes the heat and the acid. This deceptively plain little plate of food creates high drama
when it comes to taste.
Ladda also serves the usual charcoal-grilled beef salad, mixed seafood in a lime-chili marinade and cold shrimp with lots of onions on a bed of dark green lettuce in a ketchup-red chili and lemon-grass dressing. The shrimp salad appetizer is only on the dinner menu, and while you can order it at lunch, I'd wait for dinner. It's the dinner chef who has mastered this aromatic, tart-hot dressing. When this shrimp salad is dressed right, it's sweet, sour, hot and cold. Beyond appetizers, the standout dish at this glossy little Thai restaurant is chicken-coconut soup, fiery and fragrant, the coconut milk adding the image of sweetness with the actuality.
© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
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